Complaint Summary

Date Findings Report Sent

August 6, 2026

Case Number

26-0599

School District

Brookfield (single student)

Person filing complaint

Parent

Grade Level

High school

Allegation(s)

Issue 1: The Parent alleged that the Student had not been provided with the Occupational Therapy (OT) services required by his May 30, 2025, IEP because, since February 13, 2026, in the absence of an Occupational Therapist as the responsible staff, the services were provided by a Certified Occupational Therapy Assistant (COTA) who was not supervised by an OT, as required. To clarify, based on the extended timeline due to abeyance, for the purposes of this investigation, facts were examined from February 13, 2026, through the time of the filing of this complaint, on April 22, 2026. (34 CFR § 300.17(d)).

Issue 2: The Parent alleged that the Student had not been provided with OT services with fidelity, two times per week during the District's 2025-2026 school year, as required by his May 30, 2025, IEP. Further, the Parent alleged that in the absence of the provision of those OT services, no legitimately comprehensive progress monitoring data for OT could be collected to accurately generate OT IEP goal and objective progress reports. To clarify, based on the extended timeline due to abeyance, for the purposes of this investigation, facts will be examined from September 2, 2025 (the onset of the District's 2025-2026 school year), through the time of the filing of this complaint, on April 22, 2026. (34 CFR § 300.17(d) and 34 CFR § 300.320(3)(i)).

Conclusion(s)

Issue 1: From February 17, 2026, to March 31, 2026, a COTA who was not supervised by an OT provided OT services to the Student. A COTA, in order to provide OT services must be supervised by an OT. In the absence of an OT, for the period during which the COTA provided OT services unsupervised, those services were not provided in alignment with the requirements of the Student's IEP and, therefore, in effect, were not provided, or are considered not to have been reliably provided with fidelity. Any OT services provided by the COTA while not supervised by an OT are owed to the Student. It was concluded that the District was out of compliance with 34 CFR § 300.17(d) and corrective actions were issued.

Issue 2: During the period from the onset of the District's 2025-2026 school year through the time of the filing of the complaint, April 22, 2026, which includes the period during which services were provided to the Student by an unsupervised COTA, OT services were provided in a manner which, almost weekly, did not meet the requirements of the IEP (i.e., 20 minutes, two times per week (total 40 minutes per week), with an OT as the responsible staff and an OT or OT-supervised COTA being the service implementers. In considering the total amount of required OT services that were either not provided or were provided to the Student by an unsupervised COTA, the total amount of OT services owed to the Student was 635 minutes or 10.6 hours. With that, any Progress Reports on OT IEP Goals and Objectives issued for which the progress monitoring data was collected during the period from the onset of the District's 2025-2026 school year through April 22, 2026, were invalid and cannot be considered as reliable in making any decisions regarding the Student's OT services. This includes the Progress Reports on IEP Goals and Objectives dated November 10, 2025, January 23, 2026, and April 6, 2026.

It was concluded that the District was not in compliance with 34 CFR § 300.17(d) and 34 CFR § 300.320(3)(i). Corrective actions were issued.

Corrective Action(s)

1. On or before September 30, 2026, the District shall convene a PPT meeting to develop, in collaboration with the Parent, a compensatory services plan to provide the Student with 635 minutes or 10.6 hours of compensatory OT services.
   1. Such services shall be provided to the Student in full no later than April 1, 2027.
   2. If the Parent feels that such compensatory services would be overly burdensome or stressful to the student, the Parent, in collaboration with the District, through the PPT process, may determine an alternate number of compensatory service hours or identify alternative compensatory service strategies, methods or programs to compensate the Student. If such alterations are made, those alterations must be reported to the BSE.